Brief 9/12 – Welcome to The System!

Based on my reading of Avery Gordon’s “her shape and his hand”, it is pertinent to first understand that “life is complicated” and to use that theoretical statement to frame the discussion of events that deal with these complex ideas such as race, racism, and privilege. In doing so, we are able to reveal what Patricia Williams calls “the vast networking of our society” (Gordon, 5). This “vast networking” of the present includes both the visible institutions and their consequences as well as the unseen historical “ghosts” that worked to shape society.

In order to articulate this point, Gordon focuses on Patricia Williams’ attempt to discover who her great-grandmother was and who she would be today by going through the physical evidence passed on by her great-grandmother’s owner, Austin Miller. Through his letters and opinions, William’s great-grandmother was not physically present as herself, but Miller’s choices and opinions about her created “her shape” (Gordon, 6). Her absence due to the lack of agency as a slave, allows her to be redefined in the terms of her master, which replaces her “complex personhood” created by her story with a simple one designed to promote a specific narrative that paints her in the most basic terms (Gordon, 4). This specific example of discovering a figure in their absence continues to be seen in more recent times.

Specifically, this type of haunting exists in the Los Angeles police officers’ manipulation of the video that makes Rodney King the aggressor. King is physically present in the video, however, the police officers’ manipulation of the video utilizes “bottom line blackness” to erase other differentiations and highlight race in order to attach to Rodney King stereotypical traits believed to be associated with large black men (Alexander, 85). In doing so, they dehumanized him to the point that he no longer existed as Rodney King to the jurors but instead as a simple beast intent on causing harm. Furthermore, the jurors neglected to understand that every action that took place was influenced by the complex weaving of King’s story with his troubles and his social world that create his personhood (Gordon, 4). Consequently, the shape of Rodney King was created by the white police officers just as William’s great-grandmother was shaped by her master.

Both of these figures not only exist as people, but social figures whose situation can open a window into the system of social life created through history and the subjectivity of those involved (Gordon, 8). They represent a point in social life that reveal what James Baldwin calls “the evidence of things not seen” because though they exist in the present time, they beg the question of how previous “collective memories forged and maintained through story-telling” influenced the interactions of today (Alexander, 84-5)?

Suzannah Faulkner says:

September 11, 2018 at 10:05 pm

In the article the author writes, “Being haunted draws us affectively, sometimes against our will and always a bit magically, into the structure of feeling of a reality we come to experience, not as cold knowledge, but as a transformative recognition” (8).
Given your examples of Rodney King and Patricia Williams’ great grandmother being shaped by those with more power than them in society, do you think ghosts can ever effectively change the social life in The System? Is it possible that the only ones who are haunted by ghosts are the those whose people became one?

Zixuan Liu says:

September 11, 2018 at 11:17 pm

I love how you connected the two readings and two people together; they resonate in a lot of ways. I learned similar things in history class that historians look for the voices unrepresented in the history, such as women, slaves, the ordinaries, etc. These are all the ghostly voices that are shaped and defined by the higher ranks.
Gordon says: “To study social life one must confront the ghostly aspects of it”; as she also claims: “Ghosts are a somewhat unusual topic of inquiry for a social analyst. It may seem foreign and alien, marginal to the field…” (7). So my question is that how can we bring the ghost voices into light and actually listen to them attentively as much as we analyze the general voices? Especially within The System of the power dynamics tilting towards white supremacists, patriarchy, and heteronormative even nowadays?

Sabrina Duarte says:

September 11, 2018 at 11:25 pm

As mentioned in the reading, part of the complication of life is the power that is both “systematic and… particularistic” (3). Those with power and influence have been writing history and creating how people perceive society, so could we redistribute power so that we can have a more accurate, unbiased interpretation of history? If so, how could adjust the System so people could be more exposed to the whole picture and comprehend multiple aspects/ perspectives of the history?

Casey Friedman says:

September 11, 2018 at 11:36 pm

Great connection to the Rodney King reading! Gordon elaborates on the idea that “life is complex” by mentioning “complex personhood.” How can we use the idea of complex personhood to understand the motives of the police officers present during the beating of Rodney King, and by extension any racially charged event?

Kevin Villagomez says:

I am a stronger believer that history is history for a reason, it is the underlying tone of who people are. In this reading the author talks about the “Ghost” as the people who shape people to who they are. History is what defines peoples past and there is no way to reinterpret history, now this does not mean that everything that happened in history is correct. How are we as a society suppose to repurpose and redefine history when its because of this “ghost” that gives many people the drive to get rid of the overbearing power on other people?

Phillip Daniel says:

September 12, 2018 at 5:17 am

Great work at connecting this to the readings about the abuse of Rodney King and James Baldwin. How do you propose we solve the issue of those in power not being conscious of ones complex personhood? How do we change the systemic structures and social institutions responsible for these injustices?